Rank911 Blog

People are spending a lot more time online these days, and it’s obvious that the business and marketing landscape is changing too fast for a lot of people to comprehend because of the large communication shift that’s currently going on. If you were trying to run your business about 20 years ago, all you would have to do is set up your office, by a few newspaper ads and throughout the business side and you would have clients itching to do business with you. The Internet has changed all this, and while there are many more methods available through the Internet to get clients in your business, there is also a lot more competition you need to be aware of. I don’t say this to scare you because it shouldn’t, it just means that you have to know exactly how to start Marketing Accounting Firms and if you don’t your competition will deftly take advantage of this opportunity.

The new Internet landscape combined with social media is changing the way all of us contact each other, communicate and do business as well. Social media isn’t going anywhere, and you have to realize this when you start thinking about Marketing Accounting Firms like your own. The only question is, are you going to take advantage of this communication shift are you get to forget about it and let other accounting firms take advantage of it? If you do take advantage of it, it’s really not in a be as big of a learning curve is you think. The key is to latch onto a company that specializes in social media marketing and getting leads for businesses. When it comes to getting leads from accounting business, the core marketing principles apply to just about any other business as well. So if you can work with a company you can trust with some experience you can really be the dominant accounting firm in your area.

When you first think about the Internet and Marketing Accounting Firms what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Personally I think of websites, increase traffic and blogging and blogs. If you can drive more traffic to your accounting website use substantially increase the probability of getting more leads and potential clients calling you which means more business and more money. But these days if you just have a website you not to do much for earning additional revenue. Yes websites are open 24 hours a day and seven days a week assuming you don’t have any technical issues. This means that all of your previous clients as well as your potential clients can have instant access to specific forms, PDF files and free information you want to give prospective customers.

The next thing you need to understand when you’re Marketing Accounting Firms is that in certain instances, marketing on the Internet is starting to become as competitive as marketing in a brick-and-mortar environment but not in all cases. There’s an old saying I love to rehash called there’s a lot less competition at the top. What I mean by this, is that the more sophisticated your marketing techniques are which will include a sales funnel and other automated Internet marketing techniques the more business you get and easier it will be because you have less people around you doing the same thing you’re doing. Think of it like mathematics, most your competitors are probably at a basic mather algebra level when it comes to marketing. If you start marketing in a calculus level, wordy think you’re going to leave your competition and the next few months or so?

So what techniques should you start employing when you start Marketing Accounting Firms? The first thing you need to do, bar none is build yourself an in-house mailing list of all your customers. You should have this mailing list accessible from your main website and blog or you could just link from your blog to your website. Once customers get to your website, all they should have to do is put in their name and e-mail address and you should give them some type of free report for doing this. A lead like this could be worth a lot of money to your business, so you should give out a free PDF report that says something like eight various ways to reduce your taxes each year. The potential prospect should get value out of this report whether they decide to become a client of yours or not.

Using social media like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube will help your accounting business, but all these sources should alternately do nothing but funnel customers to your website in the end. Social media sites like these are perfect for planting the seeds for long-term customer relationships which can be invaluable but only if these sites are set up right. When you are Marketing Accounting Firms you should understand the difference between a Facebook main page and a Facebook fan page. In most cases if you just have one business you could use your Facebook main page to conduct all your business. But if you have a second business on the side, or if you’re running a large event you wanna keep separate from your main business you can also build a Facebook fan page and collect leads from both pages.

Social media specialists are used for Marketing Accounting Firms all the time. You can try doing this yourself, but if you hire a professional they will know all the ins and outs of Facebook and how to make sure you get a lot more leads than your competition which means you will show up higher when people search for your business or for your type of business in your local area. For a company that does social media all the time, this is a no-brainer for them to get your Facebook page more fans and followers then all the competition in your area. In fact one of these companies will look at the top 3 to 5 Facebook pages for Accountants in your area and just make sure that your page has many more people liking it, as well is making it look better and more up-to-date.

One of the most popular Accounting Marketing Strategies according to a recent marketing survey said that about 40% of accountants are using postcards as one of the primary methods of getting clients. And why wouldn’t they use postcards? I mean it only makes sense, they’re very cheap to produce, relatively cheap to mail and almost everybody needs a bookkeeper or an accountant. Some people just need their books done at the end of the year, some just need help filing and some small businesses need an accountant and a bookkeeper throughout the entire year to keep their business in check. On the other hand, only 10% of the people these days use other methods to attract the clients for their accounting firm like article marketing, Facebook marketing, SMS marketing or online press releases.

This means if you start employing Accounting Marketing Strategies on the Internet then you’re already a step above just about every other accountant that is trying to get clients in your area. The survey which relayed these statistics I just mentioned tell me that for the most part accountants and bookkeepers are so busy doing their jobs that their marketing efforts are suffering as a result. The good news is that bookkeeping and accounting is a very high demand profession, so there’s a lot of fish to go after in almost any city or county in the country. But with the Internet around, why would you just stick with clients in your local area or clients that could drive to your house? With the Internet, with a little ingenuity you could be excepting clients all over the United States.

When you start practicing the right Accounting Marketing Strategies you can get clients anywhere in the US. For example, you can have clients mail you all their records each month and you can ship them back to them at the end of the year after tax season. I live in Oceanside, my bookkeeper worked out of Beverly Hills in my accountant is located in Glendale California. Each month, I would send her all my receipts, bank statements and all the other paperwork involved with my business to her every single month like clockwork on the first of the month. At the end of year, all I would have to do is deal with her and get her things like missing bank statements validations from a stockbroker, etc.

Then around February or March, I would visit her and pick up the accounting records at her office and then schedule an appointment my accountant in Glendale and they would finish up the filing for my business and personal taxes for that particular year. The point I’m trying to make here is that Accounting Marketing Strategies become much more open to you if you’re willing to accept clients further than driving distance from you. Now I am not saying that there’s anything wrong with accepting local clients and advertising locally get these clients. However, if you’re willing to think outside the box a little bit you could be in that top 10% of accountants that have all the clients that they could ever handle.

The good news is that you’re in one of the most high demand professions ever. No matter how bad the economy gets, the governments can want their money so as long as the government wants their money you’ll always have a job. And just because 60 million people are so don’t file for taxes every year, the other 250 million people that are on is still do, and it’s up to you to do their books. You can make a very good living off about 50 clients, and if you have your website marketing system set up properly online, getting 50 clients shouldn’t be that hard at all. If you set up a blog as one of your Accounting Marketing Strategies and started going after accounting longtail keywords, everyday your traffic would increase to your blog and website.

After a while, you could build up your blog just by making one post per day. A nice blog can be set up for about $500 which is completely search engine friendly, and represents your business and image. So if you have solid bookkeeping skills, there’s no reason he can’t be working at home for yourself making it least as much money if not a lot more than working for somebody else. You might also consider having your own Facebook fan page, and offering a free 30 min. consultation to all new clients. This works with just about any niche, the concept is to give something of value away free, in your case a 30 min. free consultation so you can pick up a client that’s potentially worth thousands of dollars each year.

Finally one of the best Accounting Marketing Strategies you can employ is to build a mailing list for your current customers and start a second separate list on your website for prospects. Give them a free report and title it something like seven different ways to save on your taxes each year. Once again you give them something of value in return for them putting their name on your e-mail list. Now you can constantly e-mail them until they either become a your clients, or decide to get off your list. Internet marketing is an art that does take time, and is a skill in and of itself. That’s why it’s important that you work with people you trust, and will help you every step of the way and not just try to set you up with a good marketing system then abandon you.